


Saint Oscar of Wilde

by UlsPi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Literature, M/M, References to Oscar Wilde
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 01:02:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20417297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UlsPi/pseuds/UlsPi
Summary: Oscar Wilde and Aziraphale have a chat about Oscar's newest book, but mostly about Crowley, who is sound asleep.





	Saint Oscar of Wilde

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, this here comes from a person who had been driving their teachers and later professors mad by endless references to Oscar Wilde. My knowledge might be a bit rusty, but I did my best. Thanks for reading, and forgive me, Oscar, if I offended you. You know I've loved you since I was twelve, and it was a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

Oscar looks out of the window and then back at Aziraphale. 

"I'm glad you like it, Aziraphale," he says softly. There is so much kindness to him, thinks Aziraphale, so much genuine, wise kindness, although, just like most humans, Oscar is perfectly capable of being enough of a bastard. 

"Like is not enough, I'm afraid, my dear," Aziraphale smiles fondly.

"I'm glad you love it, then," Oscar lifts his glass and Aziraphale raises his. The angel feels some painful hint of a tragedy, premonition of pain this tall man will no doubt bring upon himself, no, not that. The tragedy that will be brought upon him, and quite soon, too. 

Maybe it's just him missing Crowley so terribly, that he is so fatalistic, that catching a glimpse of a red haired passerby in the window, Aziraphale stands up.

Oscar follows his friend's eyes.

"He hasn't visited you yet, has he?" 

"He hasn't, Oscar. Actually, you know, Lord Wotton reminded me of him a lot."

"Lord Wotton reminded you of your Anthony? Aziraphale, you can't be serious."

There it is again, this divine kindness, that most certainly will be his downfall, for all his wit, Oscar is a hopeless believer in people being good because he looked at them and they found favour in his clever eyes.

"I'm very serious. Temptation incarnate, I told you."

"You told me a lot, Aziraphale, and I'm grateful you make your stories so fantastically impossible, it allows me to actually believe you."

Aziraphale smiles, but still wants to know what Oscar meant. Mostly because he terribly, awfully misses Crowley, and it feels as though he had lost a limb, had lost some part of himself he didn't even know he had, he needed. 

"Lord Wotton is a perfect egotist. He tempts to tempt, art for art's sake. Your Anthony doesn't have a selfish bone in that slender, lithe body of his you talk about at great length when you are drunk enough to be honest with yourself."

"I can't recall…"

"Oh, but I can, my friend. Graceful as a snake, gentle and tender as a child seeing a flower for the first time and marvelling at it, mischievous in his words and movements, and my personal favourite, carved into your soul by Dürer, and with such ease and skill that the artist couldn't have possibly known to what agony that work sentenced you."

Oscar looks sad, but his smile stays on. 

"I must have been very drunk."

"You were, Aziraphale, trust me. But you are at your most beautiful when you are like that, when you don't wear that mask of being kind to everyone, when you let yourself turn into absinthe…" 

Oscar downs his wine.

"Do you have absinthe, by the way?"

Aziraphale smiles knowingly and brings out a bottle of green liquid, two teaspoons, sugar and a candle.

"There we go," whispers Oscar, as bittersweet as that potion the colour of Crowley's scales when they catch the setting sun.

Aziraphale stops himself.

"Why do you think he's not selfish?"

"Aziraphale, dear, how many times has he come to you because you were in danger? How many times have you pushed him away only to find him exactly where and when you needed him the most? Even to me it doesn't sound selfish. Of course, he might be enough of an artist to make grand gestures to impress you, but you have never mentioned him teasing you. He makes you think, he asks you questions. Lord Wotton asks questions to lead into temptation, and the fall is a very good play for him. He doesn't care that much. He would never come to Dorian's rescue, that's why Dorian doesn't call him when he kills Basil. Theirs is a carefully planned experiment without a thought about consequences. Yours, on the other hand, is affection, fondness, love incarnate."

"You don't know him, Oscar. You can't know how demons work."

"We all do, Aziraphale. Everyone has their demons, and they are usually the ugliest, the most wretched parts of us we are too cowardly to admit, so we perform this little surgery. Cut those ugly parts out and call them demons. We don't want them, we cast them out and they come back to haunt us, because after all they belong within our essence, however little we know what to do with them. But those parts never come back to question your judgment when you choose to obey blindly, never offer you good wine and fine dinner, never stay with you to watch a play they profoundly hate out of respect for your taste. By your description, Anthony is your Socrates, and Socrates was despicable, but hardly a demon in a Christian sense of the word."

"Oscar, are you tempting me now?"

"Don't be playful with me, Aziraphale. You are hurt. I am about to tell you something painful, but please bear with me."

"Always, Oscar."

"Aren't you an angel, Aziraphale? The impression I'm having from all your stories is that you hurt your Anthony most cruelly."

"Me? Hurt him?"

"Oh, don't look so indignant. If I were to come to you, offering you my soul, my freedom, my safety, my life and my heart and you were to tell me that I was just being clever, just playing with you, pulling your strings, I would die, and unfortunately enough, not physically, but inwardly. I would question myself more, I would consider myself such an abomination…"

"He is technically an abomination."

"He isn't. You are making him one. You withdraw from him, but even a snake can be gentle and protective and kind. Do you think Cleopatra considered the snake that killed her an abomination? It was doing her bidding, and without question."

"It would do it anyway, Oscar."

"Animals don't kill out of spite, Aziraphale, only we do that. Now, I know that I am making you feel like you are an abomination, but you are not. You are just purely, humanly cruel to someone who by all accounts loves you deeply, and whom you love passionately. I understand you both."

Aziraphale bites his lip. Oscar has just repeated almost word for word what Crowley told him back in Paris. A thought rises in him and stings him, and before he can say it, Oscar does:

"You like me so much, Aziraphale, because I'm of course a genius, but mostly because when we talk, I remind you of him."

He smiles, and his smile is the same frustrated yet endlessly patient smile Aziraphale gets from Crowley. 

"I miss him even more now. This is cruel, Oscar."

"I'm only human. But if you indeed miss him so, then nothing I say can make it any better or worse. After all, he is engraved in you. Such art, Dürer's art is immortal."

"How about we talk about you?"

Aziraphale forces himself to laugh, and Oscar gives him a look only Crowley could have given him.

"I am immortal too, I saw to it," Oscar puts his index finger on "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

"But you are immortal in a much more excruciating manner, my friend, your immortality will never be as neat as mine. My sins will be mostly forgotten, my pettiness, my failures, but this, this will go on as long as people read."

Oscar looks at Aziraphale and finally shows him some mercy. They exchange pleasant nothings for the rest of the evening, and this will be the last time they talk. Aziraphale will be far away when Oscar falls, no, when they fall him. Aziraphale will only come to his dear friend on his dying bed and that too will be late, because Oscar will be delirious and barely conscious when Aziraphale finally makes his way to him. 

Oscar leaves late at night. It's 1891, and Aziraphale hasn't seen Crowley since 1862 and will not see him until 1941. Fifty years more, and since it's more than the wandering of the Jews in the desert, it seems almost endless, especially considering that Aziraphale doesn't know how long it will take. He tries not to think about it too much, and Lord Wotton never reminds him of Crowley again, but "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" will.

_ Yet each man kills the thing he loves _

_ By each let this be heard. _

_ Some do it with a bitter look, _

_ Some with a flattering word. _

_ The coward does it with a kiss, _

_ The brave man with a sword! _

**Author's Note:**

> Comments mean a lot to me, and all kudos go to Oscar Wilde.


End file.
